Folded and yellow and torn at the edge

Will be the postcards you get

And you will look at them when your life draws to a close

The ones you didn’t lose

And the vague outlines of my image

Will creep your mind

Like spiderwebs

And you’ll know then for certain

That love is not enough

But it can get you through

Sitting on two edges of an ocean.

And the ghost of me

Leaving my perfume on your wife’s clothes

And the occasional voice in the crowd

That startles and turns you

To check

And say excuse me

But isn’t it you

Where are you? What do you think about? What makes you laugh? Who do you care about? Do you ever go up to your rooftop and just stare out over the city you grew up in? I remember when you showed me the street where you had your first kiss. That’s why I love you. Whatever that means. 

I cross my heart to tell you about it. Future is unknown, and the past, while nice, was our past - essentially I have nothing to lose, I’ve climbed many mountains and I’ve looked over many an edge. 

I carry your image in the strangest and most humble of ways. Losing you is unthinkable at times. Not losing you is improbable most of the time. Many moments that are lost in time, displaced and stripped of context, these keep catching my breath like a thorn on a stem. 

The ocean keeps us away, the ocean keeps us at bay, and I wonder if seeing you will feel like an anchoring, or if it will feel like a sinking. Ships sink, you know. Some ships never reach port, some words never reach mouths and see the light of day. 

You know, I hate all sailors, but love the sea. I lean in but don’t let you touch me. It’s a drawback, or maybe it’s a step ahead. I don’t know. But I’m happy to say I do love. 

Every child is a tragedy. A remarkable, victorious, beautiful, strange tragedy. Like my son. My son will carry in him the love of his mother. He will carry the weight of her choice of his father. He will be torn between tenderness and beauty and strength and goodness and evil. He will have to learn how to separate what is him from what is his mother. He will hate me. He will hate his father. He will love both of us and cry for the mistakes he makes. He will cry when he hurts us. We will all hurt each other. There is no right way of loving him. Nothing I do will make him happier…it can only make him less unhappy. I wonder if we all wish for the death of our fathers, and then take it back, over and over. My son will not know what a home is, until, and if, he should happen to lose it. My son will not understand how we love him, or why we do the things that we do. He will be jealous of the private world that his father and I will share, a world he cannot access and cannot understand. He will hate us for it, and feel very lonely, feel as if he is looking in from the outside. He will be explained that the adult world is not the same as the child’s and that there is nothing he can do about it. My son will promise himself that he won’t want any part of the adult world, and he will build his own, and we will never be allowed to enter it. My son will be taught and shown how to love everything. He will know what sun rays feel like, and he will love them. My son will learn how much of the world he is allowed to see. My son will see sadness and misunderstand it, and misattribute it as his fault, and there will be nothing I will be able to do, except trust him to understand it when the time comes. My son will be loved too much and not enough. My son will have long eyelashes. My son will hold my hand as we walk down ancient streets, as we stop in a garden and lie under a tree watching the shadows dance all over us. My son will laugh when he is tickled. He will look up to his father for his strength and his kindness. His father must show him those through love, because love is finite and it must be seen and it must be shown. Love is finite. Love is so difficult to express when pitted against everything else.

The father of my son. I am terrified at getting that one right. 

If you asked me what happened in the last five days, all I would be able to tell you is Rain. Rain has been dripping off of thick, old-teddy-bear-stuffing grey of the clouds for as far back as I can remember now. And trust me, I don’t remember much. 

No lightning. No thunder. 

Just that sound of water hitting the window sill and crawling down the sides of the house in little neat lines of sweat. I am tired out of my wits, but it’s OK, because I am never really awake around here. 

A mosquito flies around my bed. My crumpled white sanitary sheets. They used to be crisp. I need to change them soon. I grab the mosquito in my hand. He’s probably dead. No yet, but he’s as good as dead at this point anyway. What’s up, Kant. 

It gets bad here. Real fucken bad sometimes. But then I think of having to come back and my fingers curl and lock up. My spine bends. That’s what my Hate looks like. All wide-eyed and crazy like that. Ruthless and blood thirsty like that. So I play with the hand I’m dealt anyway. I might as well humor Fate for now. And my Mother.

The reports are lying around, untouched. I have so much shit to do, it’s daunting. The deck is quarter inked and it makes me want to cry. So much effort making my own fortune. So much sweat and tears around it. My little trap door into Escape Reality world isn’t working very well these days, it’s become weary and kind of too fake. 

But I suppose none of this is really fucken reality. I am living a real non-life. I am like an animal in the zoo. All caged up and controlled. But I’ve been brought into captivity at young age, and all memories of freedom come more like nightmares now. That’s why I can’t make any fucken decisions. I plan trips and never go. I go through apartment listings and just look at the furniture. Some houses are more sexually creative than others. 

Someone smarter than me would probably apply themselves to the betterment of the fucken society. But not me, no sir, not me. I’ll just sit here and listen to rain, thanks very much. What kind of life is this, anyway?

It’s been raining and raining and raining on and off today. Rain here has a special smell, of dirt and age. It’s old rain. I sit on the porch and the rain sifts through the lanai and I can see the wall of mist in front of me. This rain. It falls and bubbles form on the little pond and disturb the fish. The worms and rain disturb the fish. Otherwise, I imagine they are perfectly content. And so am I.

Here, it is always warm. Hot, even. And humid. The fans are always on, there is a calm noise overhead, always a hum. It’s like a hospital. There aren’t even any bugs in the house, just huge spiders, occasionally, and some snakes. But the rugs are rotting.

You happened. You became the newest, sweetest downfall, another forbidden fruit. But how simple is this? You happened. I was in love with you, I think, I am quite certain. And you happened. And that morning happened. And later you told me,

“I’ll probably never be this happy again.”

But it’s warm here. Hot, even. You crawl through my mind like an insect. Or a worm, even. Worms like decay. I don’t like to think that my mind is decaying. It’s just malfunctioning. It’s stuck running a loop, like an old movie projector, and you’re on the screen. And I have my own soundtrack, it sounds like this:

 “He doesn’t love me”

and it’s set on repeat too. All this to the smell of rotting rugs.

I tell myself, it’s going to get better, and of course, it will, no violence, of course. I have so much time here, and nothing to do but perfect myself, for me, I tell others, for you, I tell myself. And so I will be back and there will be cold. I will perm my hair and the curls will frame my flushed cheeks and maybe I’ll even have tears in my eyes, or maybe I won’t, and I’ll just brush the hair out of my eyes with my gloved hand and smile at you faintly and dissolve into the cold dark streets of my loathed city.

On the other hand, I don’t even have to come back. I could stay here, where it is hot, and let that heat drive the cold from my bones and fill me entirely, however long that takes. I’ll stay here and still achieve everything I’ve ever wanted. I’ll go on proving how strong I can be. I’ll go on, covering my wounds with band-aids made of diplomas, certificates and bank notes. And that will be fine, because I will have a place in the world, and no one but me has to know how superficial it is.

I only know that I cannot take another drunken confession. I cannot take another compliment from you. I do not need you to sing Neil Young to me. You’re far too old for that, and anyway, I don’t even know who that is. I really did love you. And still do, the way I always love ghosts after sunrise, or shadows when the sun sets.

When the rugs are rotting, you have to replace them eventually. And the longer you take, the more damage you cause. Except my heart isn’t a rug. The same principle applies, however. 

Whose apartment are we in now? There are mouths moving at me, someone is talking, people are constantly talking. “Radio, France, travels, philosophy, Memphis,” red shirt is talking, the French man is talking, the Russian is talking. “How are you getting home? Let me drive you home,” and I am sliding down the walls. I can’t feel a damn thing, I see you talking to her across the room, she is making the eyes at you, she is pulling her dress up ever so slightly, her white legs shinning at you. At this point, I almost want to go home with the Russian dude. At least he’s tall. And young.

You’re old. You’re an old dog. “She kept asking me to come to her place” and I want to scream, why the hell didn’t you? So you could tell me about it? I am sorry I made you feel committed to sleeping with me, since I was there.

None of this really means a thing to me. You think I deify you, and maybe I do, but for me, there are two different people involved – there is the you I thought you’d be, and then there is you. I fall asleep with one and wake up with another. It’s terrifyingly unpleasant.

This is why I’ll never fall in love with a dog like you. You can’t be Chekhov, and you’re not Bukowski, even though you think you can be. You don’t have my heart and you can’t afford my love; neither do you deserve it. And I don’t deserve hearing you say you’ll go back to her, you think, when this is my morning. If we’re playing, we have to keep up the appearances until the very second one of us leaves.

I do this out of masochistic reasons. I’ve wanted this, so now I have to go through with it.

When I come back, you’ll feel my fury. When I come back and refuse to acknowledge you as anything, let alone a man, you’ll feel that sting. I know what you’re afraid of, you’ve told me. You shouldn’t have told me and then treated me like that. Keep your lovers separate, your friends close, and your enemies closer. This is who I am and I’m not sorry for it. 

I am at the airport. It’s raining. I am at the airport, it’s raining and I am thinking about you. I am at the airport, it’s raining and I am thinking about you lying there, tangled in my legs, planting soft kisses on my thighs.

This is really quite a good thing, to be leaving like this. To be gone for a long enough time to forget me. We really should stop thinking about each other.

I am under no illusions, of course. I know you make love to her through me. I almost do the same. I make love to the man I thought you would be. The two are really quite different.

Not to say, of course, that I won’t try my best to seduce you every chance I get. This is power you cannot have, this is power your title didn’t earn you. This is the only thing between us that belongs to me.

I’ll miss you, I think. You have these crazy eyelashes…do you know how many mascara-curler-mascara repetitions I am required to make to achieve the same effect?

I wish I meant something to you. When you drunkenly declare, “I love you, Inna Tarabukhina” and I say, “I love you too” we are exceptionally meaningless to each other.

I want to show you my new place. I want to take you by the hand and show you more magic, the kind you’ve never seen. I can reverse your years; I can give you things your girlfriends lack imagination to produce. Hell, I can almost give you everything. But that would be silly and unnecessary.

When I said, “I’ll always love you, in a Celine Dion sort of way” I really meant Whitney Houston, but we were both gone. But I think you know what I meant…because it scared you.

I don’t want to be your girl Friday. I don’t want another cold goodbye in the morning. I don’t want us to keep coming back to each other, as a last reserve, or perhaps out of boredom. Of course, none of the things that have happened have happened by accident. You must understand that…such perfect concisenesses do not exist.

Anyway, I am at the airport, and it’s raining, but it’s sunny where I am going, and I am wearing a red and white Calvin Klein dress which is getting me more attention than perhaps necessary. Enjoy your summer, because when I come back, I’ll drive you crazy. 

What a difficult time it is now, to love. So much of each of us is dependent on factors outside our control, things outside us that we depend on, to live, depend on. So to love someone is to love all that they build their life around, build their self around, and that is not always easy. Lovers, take refuge in each other, eat and drink each other, find shelter in each other. When did we stop enriching the world inside us and began to build outwards, invest our time and energy into a notion of false security that the outside world is able to offer? For when all is stripped bare, we are left with incomplete and broken selves. Like cracked mirrors, we attempt to reconcile who we are, and like cracked mirrors, we ultimately fail.

All who have passed my body all have left an imprint, such is the butterfly effect in me and nothing is left unchanged. Some have entered me deeper than they can understand and left their mark at the very inner core of my existence, a brand of sorts, that although heals eventually, marks me indefinitely.

It’s these people who teach me strength – it is to heal from these people that I push my body, and poison it, little by little, hoping to develop a resistance all my own, a resistance that will see me through when my wings get broken and my feather ruffled and I am left at the mercy of the fates, thrown around the crests and troughs of time.

Good morning beautyf…what the fuck…what time is it? Fuuuuuck. I have to be at work by ten. But if I come in at 11, I am sure he won’t mind, it’s not like I’m getting paid enough to show up on time. No sir! I get paid to get shit done, and I can get shit done in my sleep. Man, that dream was so weird…wrinkle your forehead for me baby…God, I hope I don’t get old. My hair is amazing. It looks like it hasn’t been brushed in ten years. Definitely saw classics prof with a skimpy kitchen towel around his hips, in my dream. How did it go? We were at my house, which had a lot of space and large, wooden double doors. More like iron-hinged gates. Like Lord of the Rings. And we were getting drunk, and there was a fireplace. And then it was morning, and I was wearing this cute little lacy number, and he was sipping beer in the morning, and talking about this chick he met, who has kids, and how he should probably date her, and as I headed to the kitchen to pour him a tall glass of orange juice, I was like, “dude, no, kids are a problem. I dated a dude with kids once. Don’t date chicks with kids.” And he was like, but my two girls get along with her two girls, and I was like, ok Angelina, stfu. So I come back with his orange juice, and I’m like, dude, have you noticed how this door is so short, I have to bend my knees to go in, but the other door is two stories high, wtf. Then I tried taking away his beer and trading it for orange juice, I was like, fuck no, man, not when you’re in my home. And then he was like, can I have a towel? To shower? And I was thinking, I’ll totally give him the burgundy towel, it would look great on him, goes well with his curly blond hair. But then I drifted off to sleep (in my dream) and woke up with his crotch in my face, and he had a kitchen towel around his hips, and I was like, omg, did I never give you a towel? And then I woke up, sincerely sorry I didn’t fuck him. What is this on my chin. Periods are great. Woohoo.

I love my nightgown. Love it. Stretch, morning boob grab (k, everyone’s where they’re supposed to be), brush dem teeth. Your eyes are so weird.

What am I wearing , does it matter? Maybe I’ll just wear this nightgown. It’s classier than most things McGill bitches wear. I don’t want to wear anything. Breakfast? Naw, orange juice.

Fuck. It. I am emailing him. Dear boss, it seems I am coming down with something, so I won’t be in this morning, I will try to see a doctor instead. Thanks for your understanding and sorry for the short notice.

Back to bed. Back to classics crotch.

I am only fucking twenty babe, I love like I haven’t lived yet, and for me, the future don’t exist, so I am not sorry for not answering your calls, if you have a problem, honey, come find me we can talk about it, we’ll love it out, because girls like me aren’t mortal, no, sugar, we’re immortal, we swing from rooftop to rooftop and breathe sweet things down your neck, so what you’re thinking about when you watch me swing my hips as I am turned around, as I pretend to walk away, to get you pulling at your chain, trying to get off of your chain, come along we’ll make our own party, just you and me and it’s our own party, I don’t mind the gray hairs that you’re sporting, and you’re working up a sweat, but at the end it’ll all be worth it, and there is moaning in the shower, somebody’s singing in the shower, and these noises that we’re making, we’re just bees, we’re all bees. We’re just bees.

This is a wring trail to get me on track, like a locomotive pumping steam, like a streaming track on music, a musical string of beads of thought strung on a string of night, beads that dance about it like lanterns in the night, lanterns set ablaze by ghosts of our ancestors, ghosts that smirk at our despair, our passions and kindness or lack of thereof, our lukewarm ancestors that dissolve themselves along with our earl grey tea every morning, mornings of grey, grim looking earls who sit like eagles in their tall chairs, their nests of weaved egos, with puckered lips and ruffled feathers, feathers stuck in their quills that keep scratching at the paper like a million of cats scratching at the door of their mistress who is reluctant to let them in, she has a visitor, and he is allergic to cats, he cannot have cats in the room, he will begin to itch and rub his eyes until they appear bloodshot and tired, and she could not bear to cause him discomfort, her every breath lingers on the fine line of his whim, she cannot displease him, for he stands a pillar to her castle, and as all pillars of sand, he mustn’t cry, water will turn him brittle, water will turn him null, and nothing will become the absence of him, she would quantify nothing as absence of something that she knows, day an absence of night, or rather, night as absence of the day, and hate as absence of love, for surely, a day and night cannot coincide, although, curiously and in my humble experience, more can be said of love and hate, for the two are seldom found apart, and the more one loves a feature, the more one is peculiar about it and tends to hate the imperfections, the imperfections which are inevitable, as night and perhaps day, and most notably, circles, circles which lock us all into the embrace of existence and spin the wheels, which are also circles, of sorts, but wheels give circles meaning, for a spinning wheel is surely bound somewhere, and even if it is fixed in place, it never touches the same soil twice, or grazes the same stretch of air, for things are ever-lasting and never-ending, all too brief and all too sudden, all too drawn-out and static in the miserable snapshots of time that belong to us, the single gulp of air that we are given and which we draw out hoping to make it last, in a series of little breaths, breaths that get faster during the moments we want to stretch out, the greatest irony we face is ourselves, it is irony we cannot chase from our lives with a million of iron rods, with steel fists and iron curtains, curtains hanging in the middle of the room, so out of place, so alien to the notion of windows, windows, our attempts at insight: discharge Japan Germany different choices different institutional arrangements. 

Or what I did to kill the last 49 minutes of a Friday work-day

1.       Wallet

Red faux snake skin to add that little bit of fashion-victim spice. Impressive in size, it is indicative of overcompensation for lack of actual fiscal resources of any kind. Mainly contains receipts, a wrinkled fiver and a couple of condoms (not expired, yet).

2.       Virgil’s The Aenid

Attempt to create a romantic ambiance around a Second Cup filter coffee, or a metro read. Of course, it’s a library copy, because I go to libraries and sit there, reading, wearing big glasses, thick sweaters and loose braids. Obviously.

3.   Descartes’ Meditations, Objections and Replies

If the Aenid did not convince you of the pretentious hipster intellectual get-up, this should. Being a purchased copy, it suggests a certain taking with philosophy and/or waste of time on incomprehensible intellectual pursuits, which, in my case, lead nowhere.

4. Foundation and lipgloss

Bad skin and chewed lips.

5.     Faux-leather bound agenda

Create an illusion of meaning in an arbitrarily chaotic existence. The pleasant poop-brown of the cover makes the task of writing down things you never accomplish anyway, that much more pleasant.

6.  Little black Moleskine

Oh look, I’m in college! Look I write in pretty cursive and flowy ink! Look, I have thoughts and feeling of incomprehensible depth! Holy fuck, I am so cool, excuse me while I make out with my inner self for being so awesome.

7.       Hairbrush

The only remaining relic of the PUHUP (post-unplanned-hook-up) kit.

8.   Pencil and a pen

Allegedly, the pencil would be used to underline important passages in the literature. The pen, of course, is to allow me to write my phone number on strangers’ business cards.

9.     Plastic bottle of Diet Pepsi and a pack of gum

Fuck you, that’s a meal.

You wish you could pull off the starving neohipster intellectual femme fatale as well I do.

Also, this only took 11 minutes to compose…I am left with 60-23 minutes more of work time.

There is always a fall out. In everything. People fall out of love, people stop having sex, people stop writing, they stop going to yoga, they no longer read morning newspapers.

There is a void period of transition, the shutting off of the lights and moving across the room in complete darkness, concealed, hidden from view, your very existence can be brought into question at that one moment.

And when the lights are back on, you’re not the same person you were before. In a variety of ways. But you need that dark. You need to look for perfection in the dark, to feel its pull and follow blindly, to avoid distraction by the mundane, by the imaginary, the tempting, the irrelevant.

I guess this is why I haven’t posted in a while. This cost me two followers. I hate the concept of followers.

I need some time with infinite perfection. I need the shedding of skin. The shedding of a snake’s skin for a lion’s. A sharpening of quills, or maybe of teeth that attempt to rip the truth from the jaws of time, or maybe of bullshit. A sifting through dirt. I cleansing of soul, of mind, of body, of room. To sanctify the soul and slaughter hate, indifference, apathy and lies at the altars. To spill the blood of the unnecessary. To pour wine over the fires of passion and olive branches of mystery. To envision. To launch. To reach.